I am a corporate presentations coach, with private clients including top brass at Yahoo!, Intel, Intuit, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Netflix, Dolby Labs, EBay and others. I founded Power Presentations, Ltd. in 1988. One of my earliest efforts was the Cisco Systems IPO road show. Following its successful launch, Don Valentine, of Sequoia Capital and then chairman of Cisco's Board of Directors, attributed "at least two to three dollars" of the offering price to my coaching. That endorsement led to nearly 600 other IPO roadshow presentations that have raised hundreds of billions of dollars in the stock market. Over the last 25 years, my focus widened from coaching IPOs to include public and privately held companies. My techniques have helped 1,000-plus firms successfully develop and deliver their business presentations. I am also the author of five bestselling books: Presenting to Win, The Power Presenter, In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions, Presentations in Action, and Winning Strategies for Power Presentations.

Facebook's Birthday Present: A 14% Jump in Stock

As if in anticipation of today’s tenth anniversary of its launch, Facebook reported stronger than expected results in its quarterly earnings call last week, and its stock jumped 14%. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s share rose to $28.1 billion dollars.

Wall Street Journal reporter Reed Albergotti’s background story on the jump attributed it to “Charm,”because the company had “refined its tools that allow advertisers to target users based not only on what they share with Facebook in their profiles and posts, but what those same people do with their wallets in brick and mortar stores…. [and had] created what amount to digital science experiments, complete with control groups, to see how users responded to Facebook ads.”

These efforts are essentially Facebook doing more of what Mr. Zuckerberg set out to do when he started the company: to make personal connections with people. Its “charm” offensive is only a matter of the social media giant stepping up its game to make those connections more and more relevant. Companies can no longer live in a highway billboard world. The name of the new game is customization, the holy grail of sales. Public, private and start-up technology companies are hot now because they are on a fast track to provide more and better software and hardware solutions that enable advertisers and vendors to make their messages fit their target customers like a bespoke suit. For example, Viralheat, an early-stage, fast-growing Silicon Valley social analytics company gives marketers not only highly-relevant data to understand their customers’ preferences, but also the tools to target those customers on any social media network.

Unfortunately, live in-person presentations—the ultimate medium of personal connection (and the daily grind for every business)—are still stuck in the “one-size-fits-all” mode. Road warriors, the infantry of the sales and marketing wars, too often make the fatal mistake of delivering the same corporate pitch to every audience. Examples of such mismatches occur in two of the most frequently delivered pitches: selling and funding. But an existing customer is different from a prospective customer and an existing investor is different from a prospective investor. Neither audience is persuaded by the other’s benefits. Each must be addressed individually.

Does this mean that poor, beleaguered road warriors must re-invent the wheel every time they present? Absolutely not. At the very least, they can utilize their corporate slide deck and direct their verbal narrative to each audience. At the very best, they can analyze each audience and customize every point in the pitch to address that audience’s best interests.

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